Chapter 1 #2
So far it hadn't. Local news was spotty, but most network affiliate stations still ran it two times a day, staggering their hours to complement the other stations rather than compete, because they were no longer in competition for viewers.
Amazingly, the one thing that seemed to draw humans together even when there was still business going on, was wholesale slaughter.
The Vampyren had made competing secondary to surviving.
She laughed to herself. Cynical, much?
"What've you got?" William arrived in the kitchen loudly enough he didn't surprise her. William was loud. Big, bluff, buff and beautiful. He stuck a hand out and pulled her to her feet from the kitchen floor.
"U-joint," she said, brandishing it like the prize it was.
"Awesome," her brother mocked. "You really have all the things a girl wants."
Right. She remembered wanting pretty clothes, money for the next tattoo, a diet that worked.
Well, she had that. Fear of the Vampyren and constantly running, working out, learning to defend herself and being too scared to eat had whittled her down into the kind of shape she'd once have drooled over having.
So what she wanted now was – well, clothes that fit. Enough food to feel safe. A healthy family. A boyfriend who wasn't on the run. "Where's Amanda?" Because she'd heard Sarra a couple minutes ago talking about digging through the closets in the master bedroom.
"In the back bedroom. She found curtains she insists she can turn into sleeping bags. Is she crazy or – " He drew out the word "or."
"Mad talented," Kiera said. "If she says she can, she can." She stood, cracking her neck, arching her back, shaking out the kinks. The U-joint glinted in her hand.
Their father, only 53 and until last year had been a marathon runner, vegetarian, lean and fast and funny, before leukemia brought him down to lean to the point of skeletal, his eyes frighteningly hollow.
The chemo had been working until a couple months ago when his doctor had run afoul of a contingent of vamps.
The doctor was executed, drained and finding new providers was harder than healthcare had been in the U.S. before the vampires came.
They'd watched their father become weaker and sicker and not been able to do much at all except the holistic stuff they could find online and making sure everything they could provide for him they did.
When the utilities went down again and the pipes in the kitchen froze, it made it too hard for him to get water. Wheelchair-bound or not, Hank Thomas was independent and stubborn and wanted to trouble everyone around him as little as possible.
So Kiera had need of a U-joint. But outside the sun was either going lower with the day or the storm was getting worse. Either meant they needed to think about going home.
"Diane and Stu are looking for clothes next door," William said and Kiera felt the telltale tingle of unease crawl across her skin.
The couple was the low end of middle age, maybe just about forty.
Clean, neat, polite and on the run. They'd showed up in the last snowstorm and looked so woefully unprepared for the temperatures that William had brought them home.
Kiera didn't trust them. Kate didn't either. William seemed immune to worrying about them but there was just something too squirrely about them.
"Any chance you think we could ditch them?" she asked, staring out the window as if the couple might appear. "This is a nice house. They could stay here." She knew better.
William laughed at her. "You do realize they can probably find their way back to the house."
Kiera grinned ruefully. "Yeah, I knew there was a problem I was overlooking. So, what did you get?"
Magic, she thought. We need to magically find all the things listed on the website for holistic leukemia treatment.
The strangest things still worked the same as they always had in the wake of the Vampyren arrival. The internet was strong as ever – the invaders had no use for it. If they monitored communications between humans no one could tell.
"Painkillers. We have need this time, right?"
They did, and the drugs weren't expired either, the bottle full.
"Kate's got some almost fresh produce," Kiera said, even though Kate had left the kitchen a while ago.
Neither of them wanted to mention that a find of mostly fresh vegetables meant the owners of the home hadn't been gone that long. "Dave's getting one of the cars working."
Kiera nodded. Theoretically the Vampyren didn't just hunt but winter had an effect.
Darkness had an effect. At night the vampires turned closer to the human cinematic version, all fangs, blood lust and a rage that entirely suffused them.
Chicago's hellish winter brought darkness as early as four p.m.
Which meant vampires on the loose, all of them in hunger pain and furious with the cold. She missed summer when it was possible to glide through the shadows without the vampires automatically coming after her.
She missed last spring, if she was going to go there. Last spring she'd been working as a waitress, finishing up her MFA so she could teach creative writing and write her own novels, as useless a degree as she could imagine in this new world.
Last spring she'd been dating Aaron, the two of them considering getting a place together and maybe making things permanent.
Last spring.
Right before the Vampyren came through the wormhole, the ships appearing and dotting the skies everywhere around the world simultaneously, governments falling and people dying and humanity learning there was something else in the universe, their own evil put aside.
"Knock it off," Will said, pulling her into a half-hug. "Things will get better again. You'll see."
"How?" Her voice was muffled against the thick sweater he wore against the cold.
"That's the fun of it. We can never know. So whatever it is that turns everything around, it will appear as a total surprise."
That was supposed to sound like the future was a gaily wrapped gift instead of a threat. Or a curse. She said as lightly as she could, "So you don't know."
His response was to rough up her skull with his knuckles. Typical brother.
"Okay," she said. "I'm better. Stop doing that. Seriously, Will. Let's grab the goods and go have some blow-out veggies for dinner. I can't believe I'm saying that, didn't she find any cheesecake? Or chocolate?"
But she broke off at the same time Will jerked away from her, the two of them automatically going into ready stances.
Diane was the first through the door, with Stu close behind her, the two of them already talking fast as they came through. They were panicked, moving fast but holding it together so far, but with the fear they radiated, they were going to start making mistakes.
"We have to go," Stu said, his voice as definite as if he were their parents.
"I don't know how they – " Diane started and her husband nudged her hard enough to throw her off balance and stop her words instantly. Her teeth clicked together.
Kiera was certain she'd been about to say found us and at once she started forward into Diane's face. "What have you done?"
"Nothing." Instantly defensive, her florid coloring going red. "We didn't – you asked us – we've helped out!"
Will moved fast to Stu, grabbing the front of his shirt. "Did you two bring those fucks down on us? You were asked. When we took you in! We asked if you had any problems with the fucking vampires or if you were just scared and on the run – "
"Dude, let go! We were trying! Diane was pregnant, we thought – "
"Pregnant!" Kate had come in from the garage at the sound of voice raised.
Now she turned fast toward the older woman, dropping the trash bag of canned goods she'd been holding.
Kate was pre-med – so pre-med she was still in high school and might never get to medical school, but she did her research.
"Are you – " As if Diane had just somehow become pregnant and therefore a new liability.
And a responsibility. More than she had been. And Kate's, at that.
"Kate!" Will snapped.
He still held Stu's shirt and the instant he was distracted, Stu brought up a fist and swung, the blow straight forward, not a wild roundhouse blow but a sharp pistoning thrust from someone who knew what he was doing.
Will was better. He dodged the blow without bothering to block or let go, and instead of going for the face, he buried his fist in the other man's gut, instantly retracting his fist once he had landed the blow.
Stu made a sound and sat.
"They're all around us," Kiera said. Her voice broke as she stared out the kitchen window.
There were tears behind her eyes and in her throat.
If they hadn't taken the couple in, if she'd trusted them enough to tell them about scent, just in case they were being chased – "Is there a door we can go out?
A basement? An attic? Look!" Because Diane and Stu were just standing there while her brother and sister and best friends and her brother's friends were all pressing forward, the entire raiding party were already in motion and searching for a way out.
She had to get back to the house. Her father didn't really need a U-joint. It was just the only thing Kiera could give him: A fixed sink.
Kate's greens would do him as much good. He'd never get these either if they couldn't get out of here.
Panicked, she forced herself to double check the window in front of her. Pointless. Completely pointless. Because the locked and dead bolted door opened as easily as if unlocked and through it stepped some of the most beautiful men she'd ever seen.